The present invention relates generally to battery testing for a battery in a vehicle at an assembly plant.
During assembly of vehicles at assembly plants, the battery used for, among other things, vehicle starting, may be drained somewhat due to activities related to vehicle assembly. If the battery for a vehicle is accidentally drained too much during the assembly process, then this vehicle may end up becoming a warranty concern.
Conventional battery testing is not typically done on the vehicle assembly line because such methods for determining the state of charge of the battery, such as conductance testing and open circuit voltage testing, are not able to be conducted at typical vehicle assembly line speed. They typically need direct access to the battery and its terminals, which is not always easy to do quickly in an assembly line environment. Moreover, these tests may result in inaccurate or inconsistent results that are a poor indicator of actual battery state of charge when one tries to do them quickly to minimize the effect on assembly line speed.
As a result, some vehicle assembly plants use electrical power drop equipment at certain points along the assembly line to minimize the drain on the battery or exhaust collection equipment at some points on the assembly line so that the engine can be running (providing electrical power from the alternator) to minimize battery drain. But these are relatively expensive and add to the assembly line cost and complexity.